Page 120 of The Enslaved Duet
Jealousy burned like a straight shot of whiskey to my gut.
He looked at the ground, then back up at her, and then he was moving with purposeful strides across the road.
It was only then I noticed the man who had been partially obscured behind a parked tram. He was tall, reed-thin, and pale like wax paper, so quintessentially British it made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
It was his hand, though, that highlighted the threat.
His arms folded over a suited chest, hand resting just under his left armpit where a slight bulge was noticeable through the material.
He was palming a gun.
Adrenaline sluiced over me, my legs aching with lactic acid that urged me to charge out of the car and kill the bastard for following either of us.
The Order had sent someone to take care of us if we disobeyed orders.
Despite my show of loyalty by castrating Simon Wentworth, they still didn’t trust me. Indignation burned through me, chased on its heels by the inferno of betrayal.
That they knew where she was to send someone indicated they were the ones to take her from me.
I felt the insane urge to tip my head to the sky and howl like a beast with rage. Instead, I pulled my knife out from my pocket, flipped it open, and stabbed it into the passenger seat of the hundred thousand-pound Bugatti.
The act of violence calmed me enough to take stock of Cosima again.
As I deliberated how I could instantaneously kill each member of the Order, the strange man reached Cosima and began to pull open his coat.
I had my gun out of its holster and in my hands, leveled at the threat in the next instant, my breathing calm and cool as I narrowed my sight at the threatening bastard.
Would they really be so bold as to take her out on a bloody street corner?
No. I told myself to relax and lowered the weapon as the man took off his trench and handed it to my wife.
The Order operated in the shadows, illusive and ephemeral as the spectre of a demon sent from Hell. They wouldn’t cause a scene.
The bastard-in-wait across the street was a sleeper agent. He wouldn’t pull the trigger unless Cosima gave him—and therefore the Order—reason to do so.
Right now, she was safe.
If I stepped into the picture again to claim her, I’d be placing her in imminent danger. If we somehow escaped this gunman, there would always be another threat around the corner.
Sherwood and the rest were not the kind of men who let flagrant rule breaking go unpunished.
I thought back to the difference between Ares and Athena, of how cool logic and careful planning always prevailed over hot-headed action. I wondered if I was strong enough, clever enough to think hard and long, to craft a plan so precise and perfectly honed I could use it like a lance to drive it through the heart of my enemies and hers.Ours.
I watched distractedly as the redheaded man spoke with Cosima, obviously trying to comfort and coax her toward a café to get out of the rain.
She laughed, her head thrown back and her hand snapping out to brace herself against his arm as if the weight of his hilarity was too much to bear.
The man looked down at her hand on his arm and then back up into her gorgeous face made even more gorgeous by the rain and good humour, and I knew he was caught.
It only took a moment, a glance, to be hooked by her beauty, but the moment she allowed you a glimpse of her vital spirit, it was like a bludgeon over the head and the end of any protestations.
He would help her.
I could see it in the way he led her into the café, leaning down to better hear her lyrical voice.
I wanted to kill him.
And not even quickly, simply by shooting him with the cold gun in my lap.
